EFRAG, the body responsible for developing sustainability reporting rules in Europe, and the European standards bodies CEN and CENELEC have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to join synergies in the development of European technical standards in the field of sustainability reporting. The aim is to make it easier for European companies to prepare their sustainability reports.
As per the European Sustainability Reporting Standard 2 (ESRS 2) 'General Disclosures', companies can indicate whether they are based on any European standards approved by the Standardisation System (ISO/IEC or CEN/CENELEC standards), as well as the extent to which data and processes used for the sustainability report have been verified by an external verification provider and found to comply with the relevant standard.
The standardisation bodies CEN and CENELEC have been actively collaborating with EFRAG for some time to contribute to ensuring, through standardisation, coherence in the implementation of EU legislation on sustainability reporting with existing EU frameworks, which in many cases rely on harmonised standards published by CEN and CENELEC.
The Memorandum of Understanding includes, inter alia, cooperation to identify relevant CEN and CENELEC standards and publications that facilitate the implementation of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
This will avoid duplication of efforts and improve visibility among different communities of experts in a rapidly changing and constantly evolving field of interest.
This MoU allows CEN and CENELEC and their national members, the Spanish Association for Standardisation, UNE, in Spain, to work with EFRAG to better coordinate standardisation activities and ensure full synergies between European and international standards.
In this line, UNE has published the report “Support for ESG reporting standards” with the aim of helping Spanish organisations to comply with the sustainability reporting obligations of the CSRD with regard to environmental, social and governance aspects, as well as the entities that must verify this information.
